FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT TOM CORBETT - PAGE 5

— Steve Welch lost to Tom Smith in Tuesday's Republican U.S. Senate primary, but Welch wasn't the only one who suffered a reversal of his political fortunes. Gov. Tom Corbett, who endorsed Welch when many in the party were urging GOP chieftains to stay neutral in efforts to find a credible challenger to U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., also suffered a political defeat. It's embarrassing in the short term, but manageable over the long haul if handled correctly, senior Republicans suggested Wednesday.

One office in Harrisburg can't keep up with an "explosion" of child predators using the Internet, Republican attorney general candidate Tom Corbett said during a campaign stop Monday in Allentown. Corbett pledged that, if elected, he will devote more resources to the office's Child Sexual Exploitation Task Force, a unit he created about eight years ago while acting as attorney general. The task force's work continues with two agents in its Harrisburg office. "Unfortunately, with the growth of the Internet over the past eight years, the problem of sexual predators has increased tremendously," Corbett said during a news conference in the Lehigh County Courthouse.

Tom Wolf rode $9.5 million in folksy television commercials to victory Tuesday as he easily captured the Democratic nomination for governor in the most expensive primary election in Pennsylvania history. With 67 percent of the state's precincts reporting, Wolf, a wealthy York County businessman and former state Revenue secretary, garnered 58 percent of the votes, according to unofficial totals at the Pennsylvania Department of State. Wolf's closest rival, Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz of Montgomery County, tallied 18 percent, state records show.

HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Corbett weighed in Wednesday on a $27.6 billion budget backed by fellow Republicans in the state Senate, warning that although Pennsylvania has extra money now, it's going to finish the fiscal year $300 million in the red. The Republican-controlled Senate voted 39-8 Wednesday for its own spending plan. It restores Corbett's proposed cuts to state colleges and universities and provides additional money for public schools and social welfare programs. Just eight of the Senate's 20 Democrats voted against the plan, which now goes to the state House, where House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, called it a step in the right direction.

HARRISBURG — A dozen years ago, state Rep. Chris Ross voted to give himself and 252 other lawmakers 50 percent pension hikes, while state workers and teachers got 25 percent increases. On Tuesday, Ross said the 2001 pension vote was bad. That vote, coupled with huge economic downturns that followed, has helped cause a growing $47 billion deficit, spread over 30 years, in the state's two retirement systems. "I count that as my single worst vote in my time in the Legislature," said Ross, R-Chester.

— Campaigning last year, candidate Tom Corbett said — loudly and often — that he wanted to clean up the culture of Harrisburg. It was even the centerpiece of a campaign commercial. But in delivering his first budget address, Gov. Tom Corbett gave the subject scant notice, mentioning it briefly at the beginning and the end of a nine-page speech to the Legislature. "To do this, we have to change the culture of this place," Corbett said at the opening, evoking the image of a state on sound financial footing.

HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Corbett has described the growing $41 billion deficit afflicting the state's two pension systems as Pac-Man because it keeps eating more and more revenue. Corbett has proposed a three-pronged attack to tame Pac-Man's hunger as part of his $28.4 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year. He claims his proposals, which need legislative approval, would reduce taxpayers' costs to fund the Public School Employees' Retirement and the Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement systems.

HARRISBURG — On Feb. 5, Gov. Tom Corbett proposed selling the state liquor stores to generate a four-year $1 billion education grant. Since then, he has toured the state to push liquor privatization, which passed the House 105-90 in March. "What we have here is the chance to do two good things," Corbett said April 3, surrounded by school and business leaders in Berks County. "We can expand consumer choice and convenience while taking the state out of the Prohibition era, and we can build new programs in our public schools.

HARRISBURG — It was only a few months ago that private school kids, some in ties and smart shirts, others in tartan skirts, filled the Capitol nearly every day to call on lawmakers to pass legislation that would radically reshape the way Pennsylvania delivers and regulates public education. "My school, my choice," the signs read. The students sang. Teachers and administrators with big voices proclaimed. Money — lots of it — was spent. The fever over taxpayer-funded vouchers, which parents in struggling districts wanted so they could send their children to the school of their choice, built to a critical mass, finally culminating in a last-ditch and ultimately unsuccessful effort to get a bill passed during June's debate over the state budget.

HARRISBURG — Jerry Sandusky was an icon. He built the defense that helped Penn State football win two national championships and then retired to run The Second Mile charity for underprivileged boys. This was not the type of person Tom Corbett's staff at the state attorney general's office thought they could convict quickly on the testimony of one teenager. In 2008, the boy told officials in his Clinton County high school he was the "victim of inappropriate conduct by Sandusky. " More victims were needed.